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It's a tiger eat man world in the forests of Bangladesh

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Villagers run after a tiger that has just killed a local woodcutter. Photo: Monirul Alam.

Thirty
people were killed by tigers in Bangladesh
last year, and three tigers by people. Keen to preserve the almost-extinct
Royal Bengal Tiger, the authorities' advice to people who come under attack is
to call the forest ranger, who will arrive with a tranquilizer gun. But that
can take up to 12 hours...

The Royal Bengal Tiger, of which there are an estimated 440 left,
lives in the Sundarban mangrove forest - recently designated a UN world
heritage site - which lies across the Ganges delta, in Bangladesh and India. The waterways which the
forest sits on are also home to a population of fishermen and farmers, whose
villages were recently wiped out - twice - by the 2007 Sidr and 2009 Aila
cyclones, in which thousands were killed.

Following the catastrophes an increasing number of villagers took to
searching for food in the forest - the home of the tigers. Although the beasts
normally prey on deer and wild boar, they too have been crossing into their
neighbours' territory on the prowl for food. On January 31 two fisherman were
killed by tigers in separate incidents,
and on Monday (Feb. 22), a woman was attacked by an adult tiger at her home in Sonagna,
near the border with India.

The first tiger to be killed in the area this year was beaten to death
by villagers from Satkhira on Jan 22,
after they gave up waiting for the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh to turn up with
tranquilizers.

“They know the dangers of the forest, but have no other means of survival”

Monirul Alam is a photojournalist and blogger
from Dhaka. He was in Satkhera, south
Sundarban forest, when a woodcutter was killed by a tiger in the forest.

Since Cyclone Sidr [November 2007] and Cyclone Aila [May 2009], when
1,000 people who lived near to the water had their homes flooded and were
forced to move inland, the conflict between tiger and human has risen to a new level
here. Hungry people now risk facing a tiger attack everyday when they go into
the forest looking for food. One villager told me ‘We enter the jungle searching
for food and the tiger kills us . . . the tiger comes to our village, we kill the
tiger'.

I took these photos on February 6 in southern Sundbaran . A Bengal tiger had just killed a 40-year-old woodcutter called
Mabud, deep in the mangrove forest when he was collecting firewood in the area
of Char-Shesher. One of his fellow woodcutters, Abul Sarder, told me that five
of them entered the jungle to collect firewood and suddenly a tiger attacked them.
‘When we had escaped we realised that Mabud had not. We tried to save him but
failed to fight off the tiger.'

They then ran back to the village and brought more than 120 villagers with
sticks, Potka (local made fireworks that make a cracking sound), Kuthers (wood-chopping axes)and Das (heavy knives), in order to get Mabud's body back from the tiger. They
did, finally, but were afraid that the hunter might come back to the village
still hungry.

Carrying Mabud's body back.

Abul said that they know the dangers of the forest, but have no other
means of survival. The embankment has collapsed three times within the last two
years, flooding their homes and ruining their livelihoods, and pushing them
further towards the forest."

Villagers
crowd around to see Mabud's body.

“The situation became overwhelming for the authorities and the tiger was beaten to death by the crowd”

A wildlife group that works towards the survival of tigers posted the following account of a tiger which was killed by villagers on their
blog. The Sundarban Tiger Project (STP) promotes stunning of tigers rather than killing them.

In the
early hours of 22nd January [2010] a tiger was discovered several kilometres into a
village in Satkhira. The WTB team were asked by the Forest Department [FD] and
a local politician to help so we came from Dhaka
to Satkhira by road as fast as we could [500 km and in good conditions, 10 hours]. (...) We thought that if we could reach
there in time we may have been able to help the FD immobilise the tiger and
transport it to back to the relative safety of the forest. The WTB-FD Tiger
Response Team were on the site early on and helped keep everything quiet while
the FD staff arrived, together with some Bangladesh Rifles staff (BDR).

Normally in
these types of situations the tiger is killed very quickly but the FD, BDR, and
local politician were able to coordinate the villagers so that the tiger
remained safe for over 12 hours. Unfortunately as the day progressed the crowd
swelled too many thousands and tensions built on all sides as the tiger
sheltered in a village hut. Near sundown the situation became overwhelming for
the authorities and the tiger was beaten to death by the crowd. (...)

The WTB
team arrived an hour and a half too late. We examined the body and estimated,
from the tooth wear, that the tiger was about 4-5 year old."

Getting close to a Royal Bengal

A Royal Bengal tiger spotted by Flickr user "Stefan @ India" on the Indian side of the Sundarbans. Posted Sept. 28, 2009.